Just Say It #2: The Problem with Employee Self-Appraisals

Welcome
to the "Just Say It" blog series! This series is designed to provide
real-world situations we all face as leaders, and how (I believe) you should
deal with them.

First,
you need to understand I'm not your normal leader. I'm probably willing to try
and do things you won't, and that's okay. My hope is you'll be able to take
parts and pieces of these posts to help you become a better performance manager of your team.

The pitfalls of employee-defined performance

A
common trend in today's modern performance management is for leaders to let
employees define their own performance. The process starts by the leader
letting the employee know they're going to have a “talk,” or a little sit-down,
to discuss performance. Unfortunately, in most organizations this is still a
once-a-year occurrence; however, in progressive organizations this is happening monthly, weekly or even daily.

The
practice of having your employees define their own performance grew out of a
philosophy that if you let your employees start the performance conversation, they
become more invested in it. It becomes a back-and-forth interaction, not just you
shoving your opinion down the throat of the employee, which comes across a
command and control.

While
the philosophy sounds refreshing and productive, it might be the single most
important mistake leaders make when trying to set performance expectations and
get you both on the same page. Don't get me wrong, I truly want to hear how my
employees believe they are performing.

Very few people are good at analyzing themselves

Unfortunately,
what we find is that very few employees – and few people in general – are good
at analyzing themselves. What you usually find is one of two polar opposites:

Either
the employee over-evaluates themselves or under-evaluates their performance, so
few have the self-insight to give you a true picture.

Combining manager feedback with a self-assessment

I
love to flip this concept upside-down. As a leader, I want to have the conversation
about performance first, to let them know how I feel about what they are doing.
I don't want this to be one-sided. I want them to join in on the conversation
as well, but once we’re done, I want to challenge them with some great
questions about how they are thinking about their own performance.

Tell
me one thing, in hindsight, you could have done better on a project
or interaction.

Give
me something you think we should be doing right now that would make us
more successful.

What
is something you're really good at that I underestimate your skills?

I
give employees 24 hours to respond, and I set up another meeting to go over their
responses with them face-to-face.

What
I've found is after we've had a conversation where I've gotten to tell them my
thoughts, they come back with answers for these questions, but they
also come back with a great framework in their mind to tell me how they believe
they are performing.

Sparking a great performance conversation

Every
time I've gone the traditional route and had them come in and give me what they
believe their performance is first, I get these fake sell jobs. I get a list of
outcomes and flowery statements of their capabilities. It's not a real
conversation; it's the employee selling me on how wonderful they are. If I'm
not on that same page, that meeting leaves both of us feeling empty.

Giving
them my views first and having employees go back, think about my comments,
answer my questions and prepare for our second meeting always ends with some
great conversation about development and improvement.

Transform the Annual Performance Review

By Tim Sackett

Tim is the President of HRU Technical Resources, engineering and IT staffing firm in Lansing, MI. He has 20 years of HR and recruiting background split evenly between corporate Fortune 500 gigs and third party staffing gigs. The best performance feedback Tim ever received was that he was "unfiltered and loose in the corners." Tim tells it like it is, which means sometimes he calls HR and Talent Pros out on the dumb stuff we do. Catch him weekly at www.timsackett.com and www.fistfuloftalent.com.